Hawthorne's Birthplace, Salem, Massachusetts Henry Timrod Paul Hamilton Hayne Harriet Beecher Stowe John Esten Cooke Louisa M Alcott Henry D Thoreau Francis Parkman Bret Harte George W. Cable Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman William Dean Howells Mark Twain Joel Chandler Harris Edmund Clarence Stedman Thomas Bailey Aldrich Joaquin Miller John Fiske Edward Everett Hale OUTLINES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE (_Not a Lesson, but an Invitation_) I sleep, yet I love to be wakened, and love to see The fresh young faces bending over me; And the faces of them that are old, I love them too, For these, as well, in the days of their youth I knew. "Song of the Well" WHAT IS LITERATURE? In an old English book, written before Columbus dreamed of a westward journey to find the East, is the story of a traveler who set out to search the world for wisdom. Through Palestine and India he passed, traveling by sea or land through many seasons, till he came to a wonderful island where he saw a man plowing in the fields. And the wonder was, that the man was calling familiar words to his oxen, "such wordes as men speken to bestes in his owne lond." Startled by the sound of his mother tongue he turned back on his course "in gret mervayle, for he knewe not how it myghte be." But if he had passed on a little, says the old record, "he would have founden his contree and his owne knouleche." Facing a new study of literature our impulse is to search in strange places for a definition; but though we compass a world of books, we must return at last, like the worthy man of _Mandeville's Travels_, to our own knowledge. Since childhood we have been familiar with this noble subject of literature. We have entered into the heritage of the ancient Greeks, who thought that Homer was a good teacher for the nursery; we have made acquaintance with Psalm and Prophecy and Parable, with the knightly tales of Malory, with the fairy stories of Grimm or Andersen, with the poetry of Shakespeare, with the novels of Scott or Dickens,--in short, with some of the best books that the world has ever produced. We know, therefore, what literature is, and that it is an excellent thing which ministers to the joy of living; but when we are asked to define the subject, we are in the position of St. Augustine, who said of time, "If you ask me what time is, I know not; but if you ask me not, then I know." For literature is like happiness, or love, or life itself, in that it can be understood or appreciated but can never be exactly described. It has certain describable qualities, however, and the best place to discover these is our own bookcase. [Sidenote: THE TREE AND THE BOOK]